Category: General (Page 47 of 61)

Just the first of a couple quick posts from on-the-road. We flew into New Orleans on Sunday night. Monday we did the French Quarter, including Burbon Street, and walked the River Walk. We took one of the carriage rides and listened to some street music. Let the good times roll.

We also drove up along the Mississippi, but because of the levee system we did not see much of the actual river, a disappointment.

Tuesday AM we toured a plantation (Houmas House) and had a great lunch on-site. Then it was off driving our next link, up to Baton Rouge then east on I-10.

Pam had spotted an alternate route on the map that followed the Gulf so we got off the superslab and took this much nicer route which gave us views of the ocean. At one point (Long Beach, Mississippi) we pulled off and walked the white sand beach barefoot. It was a great stop.

Last night we stayed in Foley, Alabama, and today we head for Pensacola and places east — into the Florida panhandle.

I’ll have another quick post in a couple days.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

This post is pretty mundane; just a collection of notes about projects and activities of the past week.

I’ve been working on The Box and managed to replace all 3 roof vent covers. All were either cracked from a hail storm or, in one case, a chunk had been broken out. The job was not too bad  and took about 20 minutes per vent but it did involve me getting on the roof of The Box and I am not comfortable on roofs. I’m glad to have that particular project done.

Other minor repairs have also been completed. One of the window shades had died  and would no longer go up and I fixed it. (When we first bought The Box a few shades had the same problem and I had contacted the manufacturer about fixing them and they sent me repair instructions.) Another repair involved the outside lights; one of them had a frozen on-off switch and would not turn on. It works now, giving us some outside light should we need it. I ran RV anti-freeze through the pipes to finish winterizing the plumbing. Pam removed all the food and bedding and we even took the mattress out and put it in the sun for a few hours. I tracked down and replaced a blown fuse that had caused my phone charger to quit working. Only a few tasks remain, including replacement of a cracked sky light and getting new front stabilizer jacks. Once I get the parts it will be only a matter of a couple hours to finish these repairs. Hopefully it will warm up enough to “set” the skylight sealant after I get it installed — or that job may have to wait until spring.

Pam has also been busy. She transplanted the bulbs that were in our hanging flower pots into our regular flower beds, and cleaned the beds of no-longer-needed summer growth.  The lilacs were interfering with me getting on the roof of The Box so Pam took her loppers and trimmed these bushes as well. It made getting up and down The Box’s ladder a much easier task.

Daughter Felicity arrived Tuesday night via the Grand Junction airport. She will be here for a couple of weeks while Pam and I take our 40th anniversary vacation trip, a long-planned event. Felicity will be caring for the cats and dogs and watching the place while we’re gone. Since she works on-line she can continue to do her work from anywhere she can get an internet connection, so this visit won’t interrupt her job. As of Thursday morning one of the cats, Sunny, was still hissing at Felicity but all the other animals have “adopted” her with no issues.

Pam and I will fly into New Orleans and play tourist, visiting the French Quarter and Bourbon Street. After that we plan a leisurely trip visiting beachy tourist areas while we head to Florida (via rental car) where we plan to visit our good friends Mary and Jeff Hayes. Epcot center is on the “to visit” list. We’ll also go south to the Keys and perhaps visit the Everglades. I’ve never been to this part of the country and am looking forward to the trip. (EPCOT is an acronym for “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow.”)

This means no posts for a couple weeks, but when we get back I should have a lot of photos and experiences to share.

We’ve had frost a couple of nights, leaves are beginning to fall on our lawn, and Halloween decorations are appearing on some houses and in yards. Pumpkins are on sale everywhere. I put new filters in the furnace and vacuumed out the floor vents. (We turned on the furnace the night of the 14th.) Fall is here. I’m not sure I am ready for it; I miss my summer weekends in the mountains.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Totally tourists, that will be our motto for the upcoming adventure. We may never pass through the Gulf Coast states again; if this is our one shot, we’d best make it a good one.

Happy Trails.

I must admit…there isn’t much of anything interesting going on right now! I started to work on cleaning out The Box and began a few repairs including putting new screening in the main door (where Auburn Jo ran through it- door was closed at the time – that dog has mental issues). I’m waiting on the new roof vent covers so have not started to start that replacement project. New front stabilizer jacks have to be purchased and installed; I bent the two of them when I tried the new driveway before it was ready. There are other assorted tasks to do as well such as checking all the lights and switches; one of the outside lights (there are two) had quit working.

As Tabitha mentioned in her last comment, it’s sad to be removing all our stuff;  it means the summer has come to an end and so have, for the most part, our trips to The Lot for this year. The forecast for Sanderling Court includes snow over the weekend  – so I did get The Box home at an opportune time. A few day trips will have to suffice [to check on the mountain property] but these will be more casual trips, taken mostly to get out of De Beque for a day.

Right now The Box is parked on the edge of our driveway but our snow-bird neighbors, who left for Arizona this past week, offered to let us park it on their property (across the street from us) for the winter. This would have a few advantages: The Box would be behind a fence, limiting access from passers by, and it would free-up our driveway for parking and snow removal. It would also keep the grass underneath The Box from dying and leaving a bare spot when we once again take The Box up to the mountains.  When the repairs are complete I plan to follow up on this offer.

The Box at home, fall 2014

Otherwise it has just been regular chores including lawn moving and weed whacking. I drained and prepared the swamp cooler for winter and cut up and delivered the last bit of firewood I brought home a couple weeks ago. Next up is changing the furnace filter and vacuuming out the floor vents before we have to fire up the furnace for the first time this season.

Pam laughs at me, but I did some rehabbing on my old Craftsman saw. A few posts back I mentioned it had died. Well, I found a “parts” saw on eBay and bought it. The Craftsman is now back in operating condition after swapping out the clutch, replacing one of the two bolts that hold the bar and chain in place, replacing some missing screws in the recoil and body of the saw, and using the air filter and it’s cover from the “parts” saw. (The filter is better than the one I had and the cover had been MIA for many years.) I probably overspent – $43.00 for the parts saw with shipping – but I hate to throw things out that can be repaired and put back in service. I finished cutting the last of the firewood using the old Craftsman just to make sure it was working OK. It’s actually running better than it has in several years.

Rehabbed Craftsman chain saw

It is good to have some down time. Imagine…sleeping in till 7:00 or 7:30 on a Saturday morning! We lit fires in our fire pit a few days this week and sat around watching the sun set. For the first time in months I did not have to drive anywhere this past weekend, a very rare occurrence. (I did fire up the 8N Ford tractor to take a bin of grass clippings to the compost area, and took off on a 2-hour ATV trip out to Wild Horse Mesa as I can ride the ATV directly from my door to get there. I don’t count these as “driving” events as  the Honda, the motorcycle, and the F-150 were not involved.)

In family news:  My brother Jon has finished his chemo and radiation treatments for his neck cancer and recently had his feeding tube removed. Jon reports he is back on solid food but everything is tasteless. A PET scan is scheduled in the near future and if that goes OK he will have the medical port removed. It will take some time before Jon has his energy back and can return to a ‘normal’ life style but I am rooting for him.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

That Craftsman saw is older than our children.

Happy Trails.

I brought The Box back to De Beque this past weekend. With night time temps in the high country starting to get below freezing on a more regular basis (27 degrees this Tuesday night) it was time. Last year we left The Box on the lot but this year there are a number of small repairs that need to be done and they are best addressed near retail stores. Included in the list of repairs are replacement of two crank-open vent covers that cracked during a recent hail storm. The current “patch” of green duct tape on the vent cover is not all that attractive… 🙂

One loose end…

I mentioned we had cleared the path to Pavilion Point. Here is what the path-in-progress looks like.  It needs to be wide enough to drive up with the ATV and trailer [for wood gathering] at some future time. Next year the dead wood will be taken to the burn pit for disposal.

Path to Pavilion Point

Peak colors have gone for this year. Pam chose the best weekend to see the aspen, at their finest fall colors, a week ago. While there are still many patches of color it’s easy to see the spots where leaves have fallen and left the trees bare. The lot is covered with this year’s leaf crop.  Patches of color will remain for a while yet — a couple of weeks — but the majority of aspen have turned. Ski areas will be open in a little more than 6 weeks; snow is imminent in the high country. (Around 6 inches is forecast for this week  in the northern Colorado Rockies around Steamboat Springs.) Here are a couple fall color photos taken last weekend near Vail:

A range of “color” this year

Entire hillsides are now in full autumn mode

We bought the lot on September 14 of 2012. Going through photos taken over the course of the summer, starting with extending the driveway in April, it is obvious we did a lot of work and cleaned a lot of area.  We forget, sometimes, how the lot looked two years ago when we bought it.  No driveway, no shed, no truck, no RV, no dog run….

Lot entrance in 2012

Driveway entrance fall of 2014

Driveway corner in 2012. Note evergreen tree on left.

Driveway curve, fall 2014. Note evergreen tree at left.

Here are a couple driveway extension before and after photos.

Wilderness road marks future driveway in 2013. Note old pine stump ahead of Pam on hillside

Driveway loop, fall 2014. Note old pine stump on hillside for reference.

Jerry putting in driveway extension following wilderness road. Photo by Pam.

Along the way we cleaned out a lot of dead wood. Here is one example of the area we cleaned behind the storage shed:

Area before clean-up

After clean-up, summer 2014.

We cleaned out the dog run area and the slope of Birdhouse Ridge, places in line-of-sight from The Box. The drive extension made working in these areas a lot easier and we removed load after load of dead wood and salvaged quite a bit of firewood as well. While clean-up will continue for years, having the line-of-sight areas cleaned up completes a major milestone in our plans for the lot. It is now a joy to be able to walk these areas without having to navigate over/around dead trees and stumps. We knew, going in, that cleaning the lot would be a major challenge and would take a lot of work, but the results have been more than we expected; the more we clean the lot the better we like our purchase.

Two more projects completed this year were getting the shed in place and putting in the dog run. Pam also put a lot of work into the circle transplanting trees, hauling mulch, gathering and arranging rocks, and bringing up daisy starts from De Beque. (We will have to wait for spring to see if the daisy plants “take” to the high country.)

Circle was pretty bare in the spring of 2014

Circle looking good at the end of 2014

We spread gravel, cut firewood, and made (many) trips to the burn pit to get rid of old wood and debris over the last two years. The improvements are starting to add up, and in a few years we’ll take them so for granted we’ll have a hard time remembering the “before” details. I guess that’s what photos are for!

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

Driving to and from Sanderling became a lifestyle this summer.  Every weekend in August, and almost every weekend in September, one or both of us made the four-hour-each-way drive to the high country and back.  This type of commitment required creative scheduling of grocery shopping, yard work, house cleaning and laundry (done during week nights).  It took some planning!  Weekends will seem kinda tame without all the driving/activity, but I think we need the break.

The next few weekends will still be busy — emptying The Box and bringing gear inside for winter storage.  I do believe I might have one of the newest garage cats, a long-haired gray female named Cloudy Day, help me clean out any potential remaining rodents in The Box.  Cloudy Day may have mousing abilities; I believe she is related to Isadora/Izzy, who was euthanized due to illness earlier this year.  Izzy was a superb mouser; we’ll see if Cloudy Day has a similar skill.

Happy Trails.

Dateline: Colorado, September 20 & 21, 2014

The fall colors are at their peak in the high country throughout Park County according to Jerry and Pam Fields. These photos were taken over the weekend at and around their lot at 179 Sanderling Court located south of the hamlet of Como.

“Reds” along Elkhorn Ranch Road

Rieneker Ridge from The Lot

Driveway into 179 Sanderling

View over South Park

The Fields’ RV is nicknamed “The Box”

Turn right to enter Sanderling Court

Pam Fields walks her 3 dogs, Blondie, Bru, and Jo  in their aspen grove

Aspen at height of color season

Its hard to leave The Box and return to the city during “color season”

Although the color season will run for another two or three weeks, both Jerry and Pam agreed  this weekend was the high point for color. “Although there are still some green aspen, it won’t be long until the leaves begin to fall and create bare spots on the hills.” said Pam. Jerry added that “Now is the best time to get out and see the broad swaths of colors on the hills and ridges.”

We agree.

This year’s colors have a good deal more red in them than normal, it seems. Due to the cool spring and wetter-than-average August  the trees produced more sugar to support late summer growth. Anthocyanins are produced during these “lots of sugar-lots of light” conditions—and then, with the very cool evenings, the veins of the leaves gradually close—leaving behind the gorgeous reds. (Carotenoid pigments, also present, turn other leaves yellow.) At any rate, the annual color change provides vistas of reds, yellows, and greens for us to view and enjoy.

The color season generally runs through the second week in October. A check of the aspen around Vail reveals around 50 percent of them have changed color but a sizeable number of areas are still green or just beginning to change. Vibrant colors are now a common sight but they won’t last long; get out now and enjoy the season!

(End dateline.)

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam and I went to The Lot this weekend but, for once, didn’t have any major projects planned. We had driven the truck with the idea of taking a couple of loads of slash to the burn pit. We’re working Birdhouse Ridge, so named as Pam has put several birdhouses up in trees along the top of this ridge. As you are standing on the driveway looking up toward The Box, Birdhouse Ridge is to your left.  The ridge borders our neighbor Jessie’s property.

We had cleared the lower slopes of this ridge earlier this year but had left several small piles of wood on top. Of the 4 piles up there, 3 were removed this trip and the 4th was substantially reduced. There are quite a few old pine logs in play that I will sort through, keeping some as firewood and trashing the rest.  While not in line-of-sight of The Box, these piles of slash date back to our early days on the lot as this area was where we had begun our lot clean-up. We used the ridge as an entry way into the saddle and had cleared a nice trail and removed a number of dead aspen up there. We felt good about getting a start on clearing this area.  More work on Birdhouse Ridge will be on next year’s list.

A secondary project, begun on Sunday, was to clear the Pavilion Point path. This necessitated cutting a number of dead aspen and moving wood from the path we normally use to get  to the point. Pam raked the trail as well, making it far easier to walk (no pine cones rolling under your feet) and stacked quite a bit of old wood along the outside edges. This really defined the pathway and, as Pam likes to say, “brings order out of chaos.” The path is not completely done, as I need to create a few bench/resting places and remove quite a bit of dead wood that lies on either side of the path.  Another one for the project list next year. Our goal was to make the walk to the point easier than it now is.  Pam’s observation is when we create something – a fire pit, a path, a bench – we use it.  Otherwise, it’s just dreams.

Speaking of benches…

I did work on my first bench which overlooks the proposed cabin site. I found it is not easy cutting a flat surface with a chain saw, but I did manage to get the bench into a functional state. I lifted one end with a jack while Pam slid the resting block under the main log. (Teamwork is a great thing.) Then I cut the flat area with the saw. I’ll need to bring up a plane to really finish it off, but the bench is now a part of the landscape. Eventually I’ll move it to a different location but for now it is a nice place to sit and enjoy the view over South Park, a view I hope to enjoy from my living room in the not-too-distant future.

Jerry on bench #1

Bench has a view “down valley”

We did a few other small chores. I took my chain saw and cut a number of low-hanging branches from some of the evergreen trees near the walking paths. Many of these branches were dead and didn’t look very aesthetically pleasing, so pruning was in order. I also loaded some lengths of pine logs in the truck bed to bring home to cut into firewood, splitting a few small pieces to use in our Sanderling fire pit. The pit was fired up a couple of times, including Sunday morning; I was able to sit near the fire and enjoy the morning light while sipping on a cup of hot tea and eating a muffin. It made for a very pleasant start to the day.

Morning campfire

All in all it was a more relaxed weekend than is normal for us. We knocked off earlier in the day on Saturday, then took our leisurely time getting started on Sunday. The weather was perfect and the furnace didn’t have to run very often over night.

However, for the first time in two weeks we did have a mouse in the trap — the mouse wars are not over. Reduced, yes, but not over. I didn’t catch any mice overnight (Saturday into Sunday) but I’m not ready to declare victory.  All the retail and hardware stores in our area are out of mouse traps, apparently hunters are buying them in quantities this time of year as mice have moved into their hunting cabins.  So we are not alone in the mouse wars.

The fall colors are starting to become evident and peak color will be in two weeks or so. We plan to make a couple more visits and hope to hit the peak color on The Lot before we finally shut down for the winter. One night was already below freezing but the 10 day outlook for Como shows night temps going up slightly to near 40. If this continues we may have more than two weeks left in the season. Two weekends of beautiful fall weather would be amazing!  We’ll just have to keep an eye on the forecast and watch for when temps consistently drop below freezing — letting the RV water and sewage tanks slush up is not an option.

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

I’ve been viewing the future Sanderling house location from different aspects recently.  Factoring in defensible space around the building itself, there will be a fair number of evergreens visible from the dwelling windows (in addition to the ever-present aspen).  A real house in the woods! With a view!

Twilight in the aspen grove was magic last weekend.  The fading light on the golden leaves will highlight even more color this weekend.  Nice.

Happy Trails.

I know it has been a couple weeks since my last post; just not a lot going on right now! We went to the lot last weekend, burn pit was closed again. We needed the trailer to be emptied of the junk wood we had loaded [two weeks ago] so I took it to the Fairplay dump. They have a place to drop off wood, for a fee of course. $10.00 to empty the trailer — just slash wood, expensive — but at least we had the use of the trailer again.

We loaded a large amount of firewood to bring home. I managed to get it all cut by Thursday night, but it looks like my 30 year old Craftsman chain saw finally bit the dust. This saw had some problems (no parts available) but things got worse when the cutting chain started to fly off the cutting bar for no apparent reason. I dug into it and found a few more very worn parts, so unless I can find used pieces on eBay I will retire the old saw. Fortunately I had brought the Jonsered saw home from the lot and I used that to finish the wood cutting.

1 trailer load of wood

Had a flat tire on the truck on the way home, 2nd time that tire has gone flat. I ended up replacing it at a cost of about $248.00, ouch. I like that F-150 but it is expensive to operate.

This weekend it is raining and I decided to use Saturday to catch up on various chores. I will go to the lot tomorrow (Sunday) and return home on Monday (taken as a vacation day). I’ll bring home another load of firewood — after I pull the RV over to the dump station and empty the holding tanks.

I’ll likely be cleaning up after mice again on this weekend trip too. I found and repaired another spot where the mice are getting into the RV. The War With The Mice continues…three dead ones found last time and turds all over The Box.  This becomes tiresome.

So, as far as the lot goes, a pretty quiet week. Next weekend – Labor Day Weekend – we will push hard to get the slash piles over to the burn pit  (prognosis: it will be open) and generally finish a few other clean-up and cosmetic projects. Temps are dropping into the high 30s at night; it won’t be that long before we bring the RV home for the winter season. Our work for this year is winding down.

We did have some rain at the lot which led to an interesting sunset:

Stormy evening sunset with tinges of red in clouds

That’s it for now. Thanks for looking in!

Pam’s Two Cents Worth:

There’s a beautiful young doe who crosses the Sanderling lot at dusk.  (Jo also startled another deer one morning at dawn.)  The top of the driveway circle covers one of the previous deer paths through the property.  While I’m not personally fond of deer around the RV (deer ticks for the dogs) this young female has become part of the dusk ambiance.

Our Latino mountain neighbor allows his relatives to use his property for weekend target practice, and we had to endure another round of machismo shooting last weekend.  Dangerous to deer, dangerous to dogs, and disruptive to the peace and quiet we expect at Sanderling.  There are low-life neighbors everywhere in our lives, it seems.

I’ve begun transplanting some of the Shasta daisies from De Beque to the Sanderling driveway circle; we’ll see how they do next Spring after wintering in the mountains.

Shout out to my sister Becky this week – she quit a toxic job after 17.5 years, found another more interesting job and is moving to a cute little Granny house rental in the next month in her new city.  Way.to.go.

Happy Trails.